Sarus performances turned Cameron Museum into a playhouse

Thursday

Aug 30, 2007 at 12:01 AMAug 30, 2007 at 8:18 AM

By Isabel Heblich, Star-News Correspondent

After the Sarus Dance Festival's energetic takeover, I'll never be able to look at the Cameron Art Museum in the same way again. What was once a collection of quiet rooms, concrete squares and asphalt surrounded by a trim lawn is now a jungle gym.Sarus concluded Sunday with a quick-moving two-hour program that led a bewildered audience in, outside and around the Cameron complex for eight different vignettes. The opposing energies of dance companies Alban Elved - dramatic and eruptive - and Human Kinetics Movement Arts - contained and unfolding - widened the spectrum of the unexpected in the art of movement.Entering the Cameron, we were guided to the reception hall, past Yana Schnitzler's (of Human Kinetics) human installation: Fetal women wrapped in long white spandex sheets stretched from the support beams above, like the making of pearls. We sat in the round for Karola L<0x00FC>ttringhaus' (of Alban Elved) piece Last Night, in which the individual stories of five dancers (including herself) intertwined and connected over their props: a real-size fishing boat, a hollow doll house and a pair of white heels. The intensely physical, exaggerated relationships between the dancers were engaging as they constantly mutated from one emotion to another. The struggle to relate to one another or to some unseen force is L<0x00FC>ttringhaus' signature element. She has the gift of drama.A similar struggle was repeated in Lena's Bath, a two-person dance in the courtyard revolving around a shallow, circular pool filled with water. Dancer Janelle Eggleston made a childish, angry mess of her bath-time, thrashing, flopping and spraying the audience with water as she tried to befriend dance partner Sarah Emery by domination. But the queen of the concrete jungle's gymnastic lashing out was in vain and she submitted to the peaceful victor.After a brief but beautiful sculpture of women from Human Kinetics - like six Venus di Milos sheathed in plastic dropcloths - L<0x00FC>ttringhaus' fanatical physicality returned for the show's finale, Never Surrender.The fa<0x00E7>ade of the Cameron seemed to have been built for this performance when two pipes released water down rectangle relief chutes onto L<0x00FC>ttringhaus and Shawn Worthington. Timed only by intuition, they began a strenuous, harmonic dance, seemingly fighting the wall. Their individual retaliations united at times for impressive lifts, and as they danced their wet bodies marked the wall deeper shades of gray. Rolls, kicks, climbing, hair-whipping - all made different marks, a temporary painting Jackson Pollock would be proud of.This accidental abstract water painting faded moments after bows, but as Alban Elved is now UNCW's resident dance company, permanency is within reach.